4 cool Web tips

Tip #1 is Swivel, which lets you upload data as a spreadsheet, CSV file, etc., and easily create interactive Flash-like graphics. With a minimum of fuss and a fair amount of easy customization, you can then share the graphic or embed it in a Web page.

Tip #2 is really the idea of knitting together a couple of tools to post photos in real time on a map. Useful for, say, covering an event live where place is important. 

Send photos from a device that can geotag (like an iPhone) to Picasa (you may need to set up your Google Picasa account to accept pics by e-mail) into a special album. Grab the geocoded-enabled RSS feed of that album, and plot it on a Google Map.

Tip #3 is publishing a live photo stream on a Web page by using Twitter, Twitpic (an app for posting photos to Twitter) and then creating a customizable widget with the 3rd-party app TweetGrid. Haven't tried that yet but sounds interesting.

Tip #4 is doing a similar thing with audio, using an iPhone app called AudioBoo. Apparently there's a similar tool for other phones called PhoneBoo, but it involves calling a phone number in the U.K.

From a session by Amy Webb yesterday, the social media-focused browser Flock looks like an intriguing way to deal with a flood of data from RSS, Twitter, Facebook and the like. Just downloaded this morning and hope to give it a test drive soon.

I was a little less impressed with Samepoint, which is sort of a search engine to monitor Web "converations" and social network mentions about any term you input.

Much more interesting -- this one I found via Twitter and not here at the conference -- BackTweets, which helps you track who has tweeted any specific URL (as opposed to searching for a word or phrase on Twitter itself). There's even a browser button that lets you click and get BackTweet info from a page that's currently in your browser.

Follow me on Twitter: @sharon000.